Achilles
by Aldrae
Summary: Johan Liebert, through Roberto's eyes. Johan and Roberto Friendship, Slight Johan/Tenma and rather Blatant Johan/Nina. Rated for Language... and Roberto.


**Achilles**

by Aldrae

**Genre**: General, Angst.

**Summary**: Johan Liebert, through Roberto's eyes.

**Rating**: M, for practically everything an M rating may be given for.(Seriously, we are talking about Roberto here, what else did you expect?)

**Parings**: Johan Roberto friendship, slight hints of Johan/Tenma, and rather blatant Johan/Nina.

**Warnings**: Language, Violence, Mentions of Child Abuse, twincest, and other generally squick inducing things.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Monster, Roberto or Johan. If I did, Johan would have therapy, and then move into a remote cottage in the snowy mountains of Switzerland... with only Nina as company...

Hey, I might write that someday :)

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My third foster mother always believed I was suicidal.

I suppose the old bitch was right. Too bad I can't tell her that now, though I'm guessing that wherever she is, probably somewhere in the darkest pits of hell, she knows it. I am willing to bet that right now, she is smiling in that smug, oily, know-it-all way that was one of the reasons I so gladly strangled her.

Suicidal. That would be the only reason a guy like me would work with someone like _him_.

Johan Liebert… or rather the man everyone calls Johan Liebert. Johan is no more his real name than Roberto is mine. But we were never given names, so we take what we can get.

Johan is one dangerous son of a bitch; a deadly motherfucker who will smile at you one minute and blow your brains out in the next. I am what you may call his right arm… the tool that executes his will. But I am not a fool, neither am I deluded enough to believe that this fact will keep me safe if he decides, on a whim, that he wants me dead.

So why do I work with him?

The point is that we are more or less the same. I do not mean in appearance. There we are about as different as a white tiger from a grizzly bear. Johan, lucky bastard, is the blond, blue eyed epitome of Aryan perfection. He is the sleek, charming pretty boy type that the girls usually go for … kind of like three year olds reaching for the tail of a coral snake.

I cannot begin to describe how much this pisses me off sometimes.

Still, I have learned not to let it bother me too much. Women may look at him first, but they usually figure out soon enough that he is not available, and I am always there with a handy shoulder to cry on. They tend to hang around for a while after that.

After all, where it really counts, mine is bigger than his.

His is okay I suppose, but mine is even better.

Just putting that out there…

Besides, size aside, I do not think he has put his to any use since those fucking pedophiles at Kinderheim 511, if that. I suspect he might have been among the lucky few that were not molested. He was placed in Kinderheim at the specific instructions of General Wolfe, and was technically under his protection.

But then, even without the protection of the General, there was that instructor, Hartmann, to be considered. Boys as pretty as Johan was generally did not escape his attention for too long. But Johan was smart, and he knew how to manipulate people. Hartmann was no exception. Johan soon had the poor bastard wrapped round his little finger. A blind person would have noticed the way the man panted after Johan like a dog on a leash, howling after a bitch on heat. It was one of the few amusements we had; watching Hartman fall deeper and deeper, happily pulled in by the strings of the master puppeteer and irresistible cock tease that Johan already was at eight years old.

No, Hartman may have wanted to fuck him, but he was too enchanted with the boy to take him without some form of consent, and too jealous and possessive to let any other person touch him.

I am fairly certain that, apart from the unwanted fondling that all of us were occasionally subject to, Johan was still a virgin when the Lieberts took him away from Kinderheim 511.

And I have very strong reasons to doubt that he has had any relations since then, reasons I will get to later.

So, no matter how you look at it, I definitely have more experience than he does.

Nice to know I surpass him in some way.

That, however, is neither here nor there, and I digress.

We want the same things, Johan and I. It is the same hatred that motivates us both, it is the same pain we both share. Before Johan, I used to think that I was different, a murderous freak no one would really understand, even if they were interested in trying.

It is nice to know that there is someone who understands me, who is probably even more fucked up than I am. I think this is why I stay with him. Misery loves company, birds of a feather and all that.

Our relationship is simple. We have the same goal, and we walk towards it. He plans, I perform. He makes decisions, I execute them. I am not the boss. I have no intention of becoming the boss. I have no patience with the intricacies of thought, action and of pure, undiluted trouble involved in being the boss. That shit is of no interest to me. Both Johan and I know this, which is why I remain useful to him.

But even I must admit that there are times when we do have our differences. This does not happen very often, but anytime it does it is usually caused by one of three things; Money, Tenma, or Johan's younger sister, Nina.

The money thing has always been something of an issue. Make no mistake about it, I love Johan, and I am devoted to our cause, but the truth must be told. There is no diplomatic way to say this, but Johan is a tight-wad. I am not a spendthrift, by any means. But I do believe that life is short. And with only so much time to enjoy it, money should be used to have fun, especially when you have made more money than you will ever need in one lifetime.

And by fun I mean things that any red blooded male would consider fun, not the least of which include drinks, cars, clubs and women.

Especially women.

He is a genius, granted. But genius or not, the only way he could have grown this smart was by actually taking the time to study, so he is also a chronic workaholic. I understand that. He would not have been able to run the Underground Banks at the age of fifteen otherwise.

But a guy has to have a fucking break sometimes.

The importance of recreation, however, is a concept that he, for all his intelligence, does not seem to be able to grasp, no matter how many times I explain it to him.

Johan is not a party animal, by any means.

In fact, if you happen to catch a glimpse of him at any form of social gathering, know that he is planning something. If you see some hot young thing on his arm, know that he is probably drilling her for information, or using her for some purpose which, annoyingly, does not include sex.

It baffles me. Sometimes I wonder if he is even human. If it was not for the quiet baritone of his voice, or the fact that he has to shave every morning, I would never have thought that he'd even hit puberty.

Sometimes it occurs to me that he might be gay, though he does not seem to find men any more attractive than he apparently finds women.

But this may not mean anything … especially considering his occasional urge to dress like his little sister, though that may be proof of his weird fixation on her rather than of homosexuality.

But who am I to judge? We are both fucked up. And God knows Johan needs a hobby. If he gets off on cross-dressing, for whatever reason, it isn't any of my business.

It may freak the hell out of me, but it is not my business.

However, when his actions put our plans at risk, it becomes my business, which brings me to my second biggest issue with him.

Its name is Dr Kenzo Tenma.

Now, I have to make one thing very clear. The Johan I know is completely meticulous, anally so. He despises loose ends with a passion, and will not hesitate to get rid of them as soon as it is convenient for him to do so.

This in no way explains why the Doctor is still alive.

The Johan I know has killed people for the simple reason that they might have seen his face, or might have a clue as to his identity. He has killed people who loved and cared for him to prevent anyone from tracing his movements.

Dr Tenma has not only seen Johan, He knows his history, his goals, and almost everything that is possible to know about him. He is a very serious threat, even when you do not consider the fact that the doctor has spent the best part of a year trying to kill Johan.

And yet, Johan has made no attempt to kill the man.

To make matters worse, Johan likes to talk about Tenma. He has never been a very talkative fellow, and when you try to draw him into a conversation, he usually replies with some cryptic bullshit that has you cracking your brain for hours, trying to figure out what the hell he meant.

But when we talk about the doctor… well…

I hate to think that Johan might be… in love… with Tenma.

Yet, what other logical explanation can there be? He won't kill him, does not encourage me to kill him, writes the man notes full of fucking endearments and leaves a trail behind us that the doctor can easily follow. He even styles his hair the same way, for fuck's sake!

It is either love, or a very serious case of idol worship.

I am not placing any bets on either though. I have other things to worry myself about. I only hope that this thing he has with the Doctor does not get us all killed.

However, there is something else that worries me more.

The Doctor may be a problem, a serious threat to our organization as a whole, but he is not the most dangerous.

Because, you see, if anything happened between Johan and Tenma, and if the doctor succeeded in killing him, it would be simply because Johan lowered his guard and allowed it, which, no matter how you looked at it, was very unlikely to happen. Johan may have many faults, but carelessness is not one of them.

There is only one person I know who can get under Johan's guard, one person who is capable of destroying him from the inside.

And her name is Nina Fortner.

Or Anna Liebert, take your pick.

Johan's cute little baby sister.

She looks like him, of course. They are twins, not identical obviously, but close enough that I was completely freaked out the first time I laid eyes on her. And this, considering the fact that she is one of the hottest girls I know, is really saying something.

They have the same face, the same goddamn eyes. The only difference is that she is just the slightest bit more tanned, and her eyes are innocent, they hold fewer shadows than his own.

They do not, however, have the same body, and thank goodness for that.

They are both puny things, but he is about an inch or so taller than she is, and of course, being male, his body has nothing of any particular interest to me. But she, on the other hand, is the proud owner of the longest legs on this side of heaven, an ass that makes me hard if I allow myself to think about it for too long, and a pair of boobs that I would kill to play with...

Provided, of course, that her brother does not kill me first.

I actually had a nightmare like that once. She and I were in my apartment in Munich, happily banging each other on the couch in front of the T. V. Then, for some reason known only to the gods of dream physics, Johan stepped out of the television, pulled out his gun, and shot me right between the eyes.

I really do not like remembering that.

But nothing I think about is my fault. She is hot, and I am only human.

And judging by the old, frayed photograph Johan keeps in his wallet, she is very lucky that little girls were not kept at Kinderheim. The likes of Hartmann would have had a filled day.

Johan knows this, which is probably why he is so protective.

Protective is, in fact, an understatement. If he was not her big brother, I think his activities would be more accurately described as stalking.

Johan has always kept tabs on her, even though he barely talks about her. He knows everything about her… the things she likes to eat, the kind of movies she prefers, the places she shops for clothes, the way she feels about the people she works with, her hobbies, her friends, down to the kind of stockings she likes best and her favorite make of underwear… which he refuses to tell me. He has her daily schedule down to the tiniest detail, and can accurately predict her words and actions.

This is probably why he can pretend to be her. It freaks the hell out of me how well he does it.

He knows her, inside and out…

…probably not as well inside as he would like to, though.

Okay. I did not just say that.

What? He calls her his other half, for goodness sake. Seriously, what the fuck am I supposed to think?

It is probably a good thing that, like her brother, she usually shows no signs of interest in the opposite sex. Johan tends to become generally antsy anytime men approach his baby sister. It was probably a good thing for that guy… Peter Whatshisname… that Nina showed absolutely no interest in him. I do not think he has any idea how close he came to death on several occasions… simply because he just would not give up.

But this can be excused as fairly routine, overprotective big brother behavior… Johan Style.

What disturbs me most, you see, is that picture he keeps in his wallet.

Not the picture itself, but the way he looks at it.

I have only caught that look once, and believe me, that one time was more than enough.

He was alone when I walked in on him, otherwise I probably never would have known.

I do not think I ever want to see what it was I saw in his eyes.

Hunger… no… ravenousness, a raw aching kind of need that made my stomach turn with the depths of its intensity.

Now I will not presume to call what I saw sexual. There was far more going on there than plain old lust.

Lust is a familiar emotion, one I see and deal with on a daily basis. If it was only lust I saw in his eyes, it would have been disturbing, granted, but it would have been something I could have handled.

What I saw was something bigger, something far more alarming. In fact, now that I think of it, I can understand why Johan never shows interest in any other women. There is simply no room inside him for any female that is not Nina.

The closest expression to Johan's look that day was the one I saw on the face of one Dominik Eberhard, a man I killed back in Heidelberg.

He was an accountant. His hobby was playing the piano. He couldn't play worth shit, but he loved music… with a passion. He spent all his money on sheet music. He spent all his free time trying out new songs, when he was not helping the police investigate the underground bank.

So it amused me to cut off his hands.

He'd wanted those hands back more than he wanted his life.

And Johan looked at Nina's image in the photograph the exact same way Dominik had looked at his amputated hands and realized that even if he survived, he would never be able to play the piano again.

He did not seem to want to live after that.

And this, you see, is what frightens me the most.

A drowning man does not 'lust' after oxygen. He does not merely crave it… you understand.

A man dying of thirst in the desert will happily drink from a poisoned well… even when he knows the water is poisoned.

And this is what I see in Johan's interaction with his sister. It has become so bad that everyone knows about his desperate pursuit of her. And men like Capek and The Baby have used this information to their advantage. They know full well that Nina is the only bait that could possibly lure Johan to them.

I am not too worried about them, though. They are going to be killed soon.

Very soon.

But the point is that Johan cannot afford to be vulnerable. He cannot afford an Achilles heel.

It is terrifying to contemplate that he as one. More so when you realize that she is also actively trying to find him, and, as we speak, is hunting him down with the sole intent of killing him.

And if Johan knows for a fact that his death is what his little sister wants, if he finds out that she simply isn't throwing a tantrum because he killed her 'darling parents', he is very likely to toss aside all our beautiful plans and oblige her.

Also, knowing him, he will probably take the whole lot of us along for the ride, as well as any random village, city, town or small country that catches his fancy. He certainly will not want to die alone.

I have no intention of dying to please Johan's baby sister.

Frankly, I would be happier if the bitch was dead.

But I cannot kill her, because I have no idea what killing her will lead to. With Johan, you can never tell.

I can only walk on eggshells, follow orders, watch and wait. With any luck, things will sort themselves out.

But I do not really believe in luck.

Suicidal much?

Still, one thing I have learned about life is that whatever happens, happens. If we end up killing each other, it will not really matter. That was the risk we grew up with at Kinderheim. There is no day we can exist without the risk of dying.

Besides, when you know your days are numbered, you tend to appreciate life more. This game we play is simply an advanced form of gambling, demanding higher stakes than some miserable amount of cash. I am a man who takes nothing for granted. I enjoy life, but I am not particularly attached to it.

He does not want to live any more than I do, that I know for damned sure.

But we'll have fun with this game… while it lasts.

**The End**

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Please, Review. Constructive criticism is okay, I live to improve :)

Thanks for reading.


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